waters of the Nile.  The plant has vanished
from the habitat where it flourished when it
was celebrated by Strabo, Theophrastus, and
Herodotus.  Men of science have not failed
to notice the refutation of the development
theory contained in the exact accordance of
the lotus of the present day in the minutest
details of its structure and vegetation with
the careful descriptions of it which were
written two thousand years ago.  The fact is
one of the many proofs of the fixity of species.
The lotus which is represented upon the
ancient monuments and altars of Egypt is no
longer found in the lakes and marshes where
it was first described; but, when it is met
with in still warmer climes it is seen to be
exactly the species of the most ancient
descriptions and delineations.  The botanists
are considerably puzzled to explain the
disappearance of the lotus from the canals of
lower Egypt, where it formerly grew almost
spontaneously.  The supposition of the
disappearance of a plant with the religion of
which it was a symbol, is far from satisfactory,
and there is more feasibility in imagining
the phenomenon to be due to mechanical
or chemical changes in the waters, the effects
of clearings and cultivation, or of a change in
the climate.  The lotus grows spontaneously
where the average summer heat is twenty-
one degrees centigrade above zero; the average
heat of a climate has, however, less effect
upon the lives of plants than the average
variability; an increase in the violence of his
floods, or of the suddenness of his changes,
of the dryness of his droughts, or of the
rapidity of his currents, may, therefore, be the
reason why Father Nile has lost his lily.  The
Arabs having called the lotus the bride of the
Nile, this may be only another case of separation
on account of incompatibility of temper.

The lotus is a vivacious plant.  Plants
which go through all the changes of their
lives from the seed to the seed in a year are
called annuals, and plants which propagate
themselves by their roots are called vivacious.
The distinction is, however, less a botanical
than a meteorological distinction; for the
wheat and corn, for example, which are
annual in our temperate climates, are vivacious
in the tropical latitudes.  The daily bread,
which is the best and most beautiful thing
upon our tables, is thus literally given us by
the degrees of heat and cold, by the north-
east winds, and the hoar-frosts of our boreal
skies.  The greater heat of the tropics gives
an excessive vivacity to the cereals, which
impedes the development of the seed. In our
colder regions, and at the approach of the
frosts and snows of our winters, the cereals
assume the only forms in which they can
survive the rigorous winters of the temperate
and septentrional climates.  If it is the spring
and summer sun which pushes and ripens the
corn, it is the autumn and winter frost which
determines the annual metamorphoses of the
grain.

The roots of the lotus resemble the white
articulated climbing roots of the reeds (arundo
phragmites) of our marshes.  The Nymphæa
family have subterranean stalks, called
rhizomes.  The subterranean and subaqueous
stalks are confounded with the roots in
popular language, but the botanists call
these stalks rhizomes, from a Greek word
signifying roots.  While the leaves decay
annually, the rhizomes persist alive at the
bottom of the water in the wet mud.  At
each articulation there is a bunch of fibrous
roots and a bud which sends forth a leaf.  The
leaves are in shape like a basin, and when
wetted the water rolls off them like drops of
mercury.

This phenomenon is not caused, however,
by a coating of wax, like that secreted
upon the surface of the leaves of the
cabbage.  The water rolls off the leaves of the
lotus, because they are covered with
innumerable papillae, which are not wetted by the
water, and from which the drops roll off and
run from place to place.  An easy experiment
proves that the lotus leaf breathes only
through its petiole or stalk, which is a curious
peculiarity, for the leaves of plants
breathe generally through little mouths, like
button-holes, upon their superior and inferior
epiderms.  In the herbaceous plants there are
more of these little mouths upon the upper
than upon the under sides; and there are
none upon the upper surfaces of the leaves
of the forest trees.  The Nymphæa, or water-
lily family, nearly all have their breathing-
mouths upon the upper surface of the leaves
which is exposed to the air.  But the lotus—
having a turn for eccentricity, I suppose—
does not choose to breathe like its kindred.
Recently, a nymphæa is said to have been
discovered which breathes by the lower surfaces
of the leaves, which turn back to expose the
little mouths or stomates to the air.  This
plant and the lotus are the only members of
the family who indulge in respiratory
peculiarities, and the lotus is by far the more
eccentric and original of these peculiar species
of water-lilies.  The stomates of the lotus
are all accumulated upon the top of the stalk
just where it joins the leaf.  A whitish central
spot amidst the velvety green of the fresh
young leaves marks the locality of their
stomates.  But I must not forget the
experiment. If you cut one of these leaves and
pour water into the cup which it forms, and
then blow through the stalk, you will see
the air raising up the water and escaping
through it in bubbles.

The lotus leaves have another peculiarity.
The leaves of the Nymphæa family generally
have leaves resembling the leaves of the
lotus, only their lobes are not soldered together.
The leaves of the lotus, on the
contrary, have their two lobes soldered together,
and a trace of their joining can be seen upon
the inferior surface and the outer edge of
the leaf.